It will soon expand to other dayparts, but the name won’t change

NBCUniversal says its fledgling “prime pod” premium ad format is delivering the engagement lifts it had promised, and the company is preparing to expand it to other dayparts and potentially add more of them to its prime-time originals.

After declaring at the start of the season that brands would get the retention boost they paid a hefty premium for during the upfront, NBCUniversal worked with researchers during the fourth quarter to determine whether the prime pods were indeed driving increased viewer engagement and greater impact for brands. Laura Molen and Mark Marshall, presidents for NBCUniversal advertising sales and partnerships, shared their findings with Adweek and talked about their upcoming plans for the format.

Just over a year ago, NBCUniversal unveiled its initiative to reduce ads by 10 percent, beginning last fall, on the 50-plus NBCU prime-time original series across its entire broadcast and cable portfolio. Those plans included its lucrative new prime pod format: a 60-second pod of audience-targeted advertising, usually in the first break of those same prime-time original series.

Despite early sticker shock during last year’s upfronts, NBCU ultimately sold the format at a 75 percent premium above the average cost of an ad in each show, according to a source close to negotiations. The company sold 80 percent of its prime pod inventory in the upfront (including all of the season’s available prime pod inventory for USA and Syfy’s shows), leaving 20 percent for the scatter market.

“Viewers are telling us that prime pods are the kind of commercial experiences that all commercial experiences should aspire to be, in being that they are more cohesive with the content, they are shorter formats, and so it really drove the key metrics,” said Molen, who noted that purchase intent was up nearly 30 percent in the key adults 18-34 demo. “They were very vocal in telling us, in all forms of research, that this is the way to do ads.”

In its search engagement study with EDO, NBCUniversal found that prime pods had a 12 percent lift in search engagement and was “over two times more impactful in terms of search results than traditional pods,” said Molen.

Research also found that the size of a brand’s logo and the length of time it appears onscreen drives recall of prime pod ads, and a prime pod containing new content from a brand increases recall and intent to purchase.

Half a season in, NBCU is still experimenting with the best methods of letting viewers know that during prime pods, their program will resume in just 60 seconds, instead of the usual two or three minutes.

“It’s more genre-based, whereas the countdown clock seems to be working in our cable properties,” said Marshall. “If you look on the broadcast side of it, we’ve tested the ‘we’ll be back in one minute,’ which we use on NBC pretty consistently. And it does better in dramas as opposed to comedies.”

Jason Lynch is Adweek's TV/Media Editor, overseeing trends, technology, personalities and programming across broadcast, cable and streaming video. Formerly TV Editor for People magazine, he has been covering the TV and movie industries for two decades.